A healthy woman of average size has 27% of body fat. The rest of her weight comes from muscle tissue (35%) and bones (12%), while the remaining 25 percent is from skin, blood, organs, hair, etc. This healthy woman moves towards obesity because of unhealthy eating habits and reduced activity levels, accumulating layers of fat first on her belly and buttocks, and later on the other parts of her body. She can see clearly that she's obese, and does not need a weighing scale or the other methods of measuring and weighing fat.
According to the Population Reference Bureau, obesity rates have increased by 37 percent between 1998 and 2006, and one in three adults living in the United States is obese. Obviously a weighing scale cannot be a guide to the different composition of muscle, bone, and fat in the total weight. But for obese persons, the increased weight has come because of the accumulation of layers upon layers of saturated fat. When such persons start eating healthy, and raise activity levels to burn off the extra fat, the weighing scale is a good way to measure their progress. The Biggest Loser uses weighing scales! Weekly weigh-ins work for obese persons, but once you've got into a more healthy shape, the body weight does not change dramatically. At this point it is better to use the waist-to-hip ratio or the skin pinch test to measure your body fat.
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